Google has reported that the UK population as a whole now spends more time online than they do watching TV. This is an epochal change for marketers. It means that they must finally get to grips with a medium (the internet) that has remained largely resistant to their wiles.

Think of an online marketing campaign that has impressed you. I bet you that you can’t. Think of the online products that you use and value: iTunes, Amazon.com, Skype, Google. I would bet that you did not find these products as a result of a marketing message. Someone recommended them to you. You may have followed a link on a web page. And if you did I bet that link was contextual. It was not an advertisement.

Old school advertising is good for awareness, but it has not been a major part of the success of internet-era marketing. Internet era marketing is about testimonials, about peer recommendations, about serendipity: stumbling across something interesting whilst looking for something else.

It is no surprise that the way to internet marketing success has been shown by paid search. Paid search has the huge advantage of being contextual. Advertisers choose when to give you their message. They give you their message only when they think you are likely to transact. They are only going to communicate to you if they feel their communication is welcome.

But there are other products waiting in the wings behind paid search. These products, too, will depend on marketers opening a conversation only when they know that a consumer is responsive. It is one reason internet marketers are using our products at Market Sentinel. They want to find out what is being said online in ongoing conversations, conversations that are (or could be) relevant to their product. And then they want to join in with those conversations.

And that joining in process is one of the hardest things to pull off. Years ago, when I was at the BBC, I was one of those responsible (with my current colleague Sheila Sang) for launching the BBC’s message boards. It was an invaluable opportunity to learn about how communities worked. One thing I learnt good and early is that if an outsider comes into a community with an irrelevant marketing message, they will be shunned. It is as if an insurance salesman were to wander into a snug bar and suddenly pitch into a sales spiel in front of eight surprised drinkers. Such a conversation only works if it is relevant. If someone is discussing where to go skiing, and you happen to mention that you know a good place, they will be keen to listen, particularly if you seem to be impartial.

That is why we work with our customers to identify where the appropriate conversations are taking place online, and to identify the authorities. That is the beginning of understanding where a conversation can begin. Is there a strategy for beginning a conversation that always work? No. Conversations of this kind are like pick-up lines, nothing quite works twice. But honesty helps: “Hi I know you like my product because I noticed you talking about it. I am keen to hear your reaction to some new features I am planning to introduce.” This is the strategy that Intuit used to get their QuickBooks blogging strategy underway.

You might call it contextual marketing, and, as a science, it’s in its infancy. We are taking baby steps to figure out how it should work. As ever in this new world of marketing communications, it is going to be all about permission, about honesty and about relevance.

Monday night saw the excellent Seth Godin address the Geek Dinner at London’s Texas Embassy. His theme was that the era of interruptive advertising was coming to an end. He argued that people were less and less susceptible to buying products as a consequence of being forced to stop what they were doing and wait to absorb an advertising message. He cited the increasing use of pop-up blockers online, and TiVO on TV. (One might also add those who use RSS readers to that list) He demonstrated declining response rates from such advertising.

Instead Godin argued that all marketers were, as he put it, “in the fashion business”, and that the job of companies was to design and sell things that were, of their nature, remarkable, and which created word-of-mouth commentary. The example he uses here is his famous Purple Cow. A Purple Cow is a creature so extraordinary that its very existence is a matter of comment. As consumers comment on it, they spread news of its existence. The real world analogy is the comparison between BMW and GM’s Lincoln Mercury. GM spends 15 times as much marketing the Lincoln Mercury as BMW spends marketing the equivalent model. BMW don’t need to promote their car. The customers do that for them.

He said (if I understood him aright) that the future of marketing success lay in growth driven by a) remarkable products, b) permission-based advertising media.

This argument does not suggest that conventional advertising and marketing has to disappear. Far from it. It suggests that in order to succeed advertising and marketing messages have to change. They adopt more of the characteristics which were previously the preserve of publishers and broadcasters. Marketing and advertising messages have to take on the characteristics of content. They have to become stories - stories that are interesting enough to pass on. Otherwise they will simply be blocked by our increasingly efficient spam filters.

Seth Godin’s argument relates directly to the use of blogging and RSS. RSS is of its nature a permission-based source of information. I will only subscribe to a feed which is delivering me high-quality information. I will only pay attention to information which is timely and relevant to me. In the blogosphere I will give more attention to blogs which are endorsed or linked by people whose values I trust. In both cases the “story” needs to be strong enough to get me to opt-in to the communication. My finger is permanently hovering over the click which will take me somewhere else, possibly forever.